“Sure. Gimme his name.”
“William Sterling Overton.” She spelled the surname.
“What’s he star in?”
“He’s an attorney. But he’s been married to actresses and he dates supermodels, so I think he’ll be in the celebrity pool.”
After maybe ten seconds, Chloe said, “Yeah, he’s cute. But I gotta say, he’s kind of old for you.”
Chloe shared the screen, and Jane saw a man who resembled the actor Rob Lowe with a rougher edge.
Working the phone again, Chloe said, “He’s forty-four.”
“Ancient,” Jane said. “But cute. And rich.”
“Rich is best,” Chloe said. “Rich is forever young, huh? Yeah, he’s in town. He’s got a one o’clock lunch reservation at Alla Moda. That is a super-expensive joint.” She looked at Jane’s outfit. “You maybe want to change if you’re gonna try to slide up to him there.”
“I will,” Jane said. “You’re totally right.”
“More style, more hot,” Chloe advised.
15
* * *
ON HER WAY TO A LIBRARY in Woodland Hills, Jane passed a high school where six or eight police cars had gathered. Uniformed cops were arrayed on the public sidewalk, mostly in pairs, as if they expected something worse to happen than what had already occurred.
Scores of students milled about at the top of the school steps, watching the police.
Two handcuffed teenagers sat at the bottom of the steps, talking to each other, at the moment laughing.
Forty feet from the comedians, a dead man lay on the sidewalk. The scene was so fresh, no one had covered the body, although an officer was taking a blanket from the trunk of a patrol car.
The victim had gray hair. Maybe a teacher. Or just someone passing by at the wrong time.
Not long ago, ninety percent of homicides were committed by people who knew their victims. Now as many as thirty percent involved people who didn’t know each other. Once a crime of intimacy, homicide was becoming as random as death by lightning.
She arrived at the library in Woodland Hills without another disturbing incident. She was grateful for uneventful moments.
At a workstation in the computer alcove, she googled William Sterling Overton. She took her time. The people looking for her would not have included the lawyer on a red-flag list of names, words, phrases, and websites that might identify her use of library Internet access. She had first learned of his creepy connection to “Shenneck’s playpen”—therefore to Shenneck—because Jimmy Bob had used his criminal expertise against his clients as well as for them, but those in conspiracy with Shenneck would be unaware of that.
Within half an hour, she had all she needed. In fifteen minutes, she also got the basics on Dr. Emily Rossman, the L.A. forensic pathologist whose autopsy report she had found pertinent.
Last of all, she googled Dougal Trahern, a name she had finally remembered this morning, after it had teased at the back of her mind since Monday in San Diego. Interesting.
During her time in the library, a change had come over the morning. The ocean, far off and unseen in the south, had spawned a towering fog, which now was driven inland by an onshore flow. The sky beyond the Santa Monica Mountains loomed white. The distant heights of rock-shot earth and chaparral were dissolving from view as if the mist were a universal solvent. Easing through those mountain passes, the fog might never reach here, but it pushed before it a cooling breeze that had a faint metallic scent she couldn’t identify.
For no reason she could define, as she breathed in that thin astringent odor and stared south at the dead-white sky, she wondered if things were all right at Gavin and Jessica’s place, if the German shepherds remained alert to trouble, if Travis was still safe.
16
* * *
ACCORDING TO HIGHLY LAUDATORY magazine profiles in Vanity Fair and GQ, the house in Beverly Hills was only one of five residences owned by William Overton. The attorney had a Manhattan apartment, another in Dallas. A golf-course home in Rancho Mirage. A penthouse in a glittering San Francisco high-rise.
The Beverly Hills home was his primary residence. Jane could have used the city directory to get an address; but a photo of the house in a newspaper article had revealed the street number.
Google Earth had provided a satellite look at the property. Street View gave her a 360-degree scan of the entire block.
She arrived at 2:30 in the afternoon with a plan.
After learning about Overton from Chloe, Jane had read a magazine piece in which it was said that a Friday lunch at Alla Moda—Italian for fashionable—was sacred to him, his favorite meal of the week, that he ate with the chef, who was his co-owner, and that the two-hour lunch marked the start of his weekend.
She was banking on him holding to his habits.
The Moderne-style two-story house with step-back details at the front door and roofline had been featured in a Los Angeles Times piece. This bachelor’s pad was “only” seven thousand square feet in an area where houses were often fifteen thousand or even larger.
Given the size of the house and Overton’s reputation as a Don Juan, she doubted he needed or wanted live-in help. A full-time maid could keep the place clean. In all likelihood, she was expected to be gone for the week when the master of the house came home from his sacred lunch, which might be between three-thirty and five o’clock.
After parking around the corner, Jane walked back to the place, carrying a large purse. She followed a walkway of limestone pavers and rang the bell. When no one answered, she rang again, and again.
Staked in a nearby flowerbed, a foot-square sign with red-and-black lettering announced:
PROTECTED BY
VIGILANT EAGLE, INC.
IMMEDIATE ARMED RESPONSE.
Most home-security companies used the same central station, to which all breaches of premises were first reported. Depending on its protocols, the central station summoned the police if it deemed the signal not to be a false alarm.
A company that dispatched its own licensed-to-carry officers, who were likely to be there well before the cops, was an expensive alternative and daunting to would-be burglars.
As Google had revealed, Overton’s house was screened from the adjacent properties by privacy walls against which had been planted a series of Ficus nitida—trees with dense foliage, trained into tall hedges. The neighbors could not see Jane at the front door. Nor could they see her as she walked around the side of the house to the big backyard, which was screened from view on all three sides.
Lined with blue-glass tiles, the sparkling lap pool was about a hundred feet long. The nearer end shaped into a spa to sit eight.
An enormous patio paved with limestone. An outdoor kitchen at one end. Enough teak chairs and lounges, fitted with blue cushions, to seat at least twenty people. A second-story deck with more teak furniture shaded half the lower space.
The house was a miniature resort. Manicured shrubs and flowers. Ultramodern statuary that resembled nothing, just shapes. Sleek and tasteful. The Beautiful People would feel at home here when invited, and a few might even be beautiful on the inside, too.
According to gossip sites, Overton was currently between main squeezes. If the gossipers could be believed, no heiress, model, supermodel, or actress lived with him.
Because Jane had no way to get inside until Overton arrived and deactivated the alarm, she settled into a chair toward the corner of the house that adjoined the garage.
Earlier, at the library, using a police passcode to the DMV records in Sacramento, she learned that two vehicles were registered to Overton at the Beverly Hills address—a white Bentley, a red Ferrari—and one to his law firm, a black Tesla. If he was driving the electric vehicle, she might not be alerted to his arrival until the garage door began to rumble upward.